The Darkest Eden
by QTW
Summary: Chaos reigns in the town of Birmingham. There are no rules except the ones that help you survive and of course, the golden rule. Nothing is as it seems.


Wow. I never thought I'd do this, but here it is. I don't expect this fic to stay in the T rating for long. It will soon be rising to the M zone. So don't be surprised if you don't see it with the normal rating filter.

I don't own "The Nightmare before Christmas" or its characters. All I got is my OCs and the plot track I'm running on. This is a very dark fic. There will be deaths. There will be horrors cast upon those who do and don't deserve it. But I assure you.

This will be one _hell _of a ride.

Happy Reading.

Prologue

Emptiness.

Blaringly painful, unending amounts of empty white as far as his mind could dare to process. His eyes were closed, but he did not need them open to know what was around him.

There was no sense of floor, ceiling, or walls except for the position where he was sitting at the time. For now, he'd labeled his seat as the floor. Not to satisfy some need for normalcy but to stop the uncomfortable churn in his abdomen.

'_Had it always been this way?_' was the question frequently pondered upon by the form curled in a tightened jacket and pants equally colored as the room he sat in. The question could not be answered. Not by him anyway. The sickening toss of sedatives in his body made any real attempt at thought ineffective, and if his attempts continued, painful.

Not that he wasn't accustomed to pain. The Figures always came to him in their bleached white coats with the promise of torture in their hands or swaggering behind them with a sneer on its face. At the thought of the beings his face contorted and the taste of sour bile assailed his throat.

The thought of the Figures had always made him cringe. Memories of the cotton white floor being stained the darkest of crimsons and the sound he had no words for would flash through his mind's eye until he was no more than a shivering mess.

But the Sneer…

That was something else entirely. He'd been well aware that 'Sneer' was not the name of the creature he'd been thinking of, but that was the most prominent form of identification his mind could conjure from the depths of his usually fogged mind.

The 'Sneer's' face was fitting of its name. Always there was the cold and calculating smirk that made air turn into flames and ashes in his chest. An oversized dome with no hair was its head, adorned with black tinted glasses. The smell of disinfectant and burning rubber gloves followed the Sneer like an ever-present veil of poison; chocking his nose with its potency and making his eyes water from the lack of oxygen intake. He could only remember the Sneer's eyes vaguely, but he remembered what he'd felt during every single encounter.

Fear.

The feeling of menacing and oily, invisible hands gripping his ribcage with the threat of crushing him and the profuse amount of sweat on his neck despite how much the room's temperature dropped.

Or was it his temperature that fell?

He wasn't sure.

The sudden sound of locks being undone announced the arrival of one of the Figures. A rush of cold and sterile air assaulted him and blew a chilling breath along the nape of his neck, making him shiver slightly.

Echoing footsteps reverberated throughout the room hauntingly, slowly, and not at all in synch with the quick, almost excited, pace of the Figure's feet.

Thump.

Thump..

Thump…

The footsteps stopped not but two inches away from his nose and the very feel of its presence made his skin prickle.

"Time to get going, 31."

The sound of the Figure's acid voice made 31's eyes snap open. His visual senses were instantly barraged by the scalding white he had known would be there, but he wasted no time trying to blink the pain away. If he blinked the Figure would notice. The Figure would notice his weakness. And pain would soon follow.

In an attempt to comply with the Figure's orders, 31 tried to raise his head but only managed to lift his chin a fraction of an inch away from the spot on his chest where it was resting. A sudden wave of nausea, from where 31 knew not, made his vision blur and the little strength he had to lift his head was sapped from him. 31's body slumped back weakly.

Taking 31's immobility as an act of defiance, the Figure acted in accordance to what his job permitted him to do. A rifle was raised and then brought down harshly. Blurred images flashed through 31's mind as the butt of a rifle made harsh contact with the side of 31's skull. 31's body began to spasm. Images of bloodied white piano keys and rusted voices screaming pleas for mercy that fell into silence after pained gargles for air. The images span faster and the convulsions worsened.

A Figure held a scrawny child by the collar; attempting to drag him away from his heat drained and foggy eyed mother even though the child's reverent screaming and clinging to the body asked for her to return. The dead eyes remained locked on the child's, boring holes into his mind until they were forever cemented into his being.

Another blow from the rifle and faster came the images.

Screams distorted by a plethora of gun shots. A cradle tipped over with a small bundle with a blanket around its neck. Glass shattering, doors breaking, air and vision slowly disappearing as the child's collar slowly suffocated him. Images and sound mixed into an oily film, silencing all other images sans one. The child's mother slowly raised her hand. The touch of the mother's hand was cold and yet somehow burned against the child's skin. A fountain of a now familiar red poured from her violated throat and stained her satin blue dress with crimson fingers that slowly descended along her form. With a bloodied breath, the woman coughed out words the boy couldn't understand but was sure he had many times before. Her lips mimed out her final words.

_I love you ~._

The last word and image of the woman faded into darkness. As did 31's temporary grip on his sanity.

Spasms of panic slowly transformed into shudders of delight. Soundless screams turned into booming laughter. The blows from the rifle had stopped.

31's senses seemed to expand to every crevice of the white room. He was finally aware of the sticky stream of blood flowing down his neck and onto his straight jacket. He could finally make sense of the seemingly endless white around him that had turned into a simple, tiled, eggshell-white box.

And a door that hung slightly ajar slowly became visible.

Sharp gasps and a frantic heart broke 31's concentration. The Figure had paled severely during 31's little slip from sanity. Wide blue eyes stared down at 31 with a look of trepidation. What had once been a dazed prisoner now bore the image of a deranged sadist. 31 could easily identify the man's fear. The salty-sweet scent of adrenaline and an unsatisfied twitch towards the room's exit made his thoughts quite obvious.

The words were painted on his face in the curtain of beaded sweat that now cascaded down like tears. Run. Get help. _Live_.

31 couldn't allow that. Not when he'd felt so entertained, but at the same time a near mute voice waded up from the depths of his madness.

_Run away…_

Summoning a strength he'd no idea that he had, 31 lurched himself into a crouch and stood. At first 31 could do nothing but stare blankly at the man as blood rushed through his mind from the abrupt movement. But within moments his focus returned and cowering in front of him was the form of a Figure.

_You shouldn't be here!_

_So scared, _31 giggled inwardly. He could smell pure fear pouring off the Figure. _So good…_

_Run away!_

A lanky step forward.

The Figure stumbled backwards clumsily and tumbled to the floor. Almost like an ant escaping the talons of a bird, the Figure scrambled for the door.

_Run!_

31 took another step which seemed to bend space around him. Everything drew closer and became more refined. The teal blue of the Figure's eyes became more pronounced as they widened in fear. If only he could hear the warnings.

A crazed grin threatened to cleave 31's face in half and the size of the Figure's eyes in turn doubled in size.

_RUN!_

31 drew closer until his face was no more then an inch away from the Figure's, saliva falling from his maw like a wild dog's. Drawing a deep and silent breath, 31 spoke his first word since his last meal.

"Run."

The Figure took 31's words to heart. He ran.

And didn't get far…

A scream echoed down the halls of a dark asylum, ending in the gurgled moan of a man drowning in red water. Sitting in his office a man lifted his head from his work and sneered.

"Hmm, feeding time already?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Break~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So… that's how this is going to start. I hope you liked.

Now review. Because I'm sure you all know who 31 is. And he's hungry…


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